John Lennon's books and manuscripts fetch high price at auction in New York

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Original manuscripts and drawings by former Beatle John Lennon, produced for two acclaimed books he wrote in the mid-1960s, sold for $2.9m (£1.73m) on Wednesday, more than double the pre-sale estimate, Sotheby's auction house said.

All of the 89 lots in the sale, from Lennon's 1964 book In His Own Write and 1965's A Spaniard in the Works, were snapped up by buyers. The highlight of the sale was The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield, the manuscript for Lennon's parody of Sherlock Holmes from A Spaniard in the Works which fetched $209,000 (£125,000). "The outstanding result, the first white glove sale of 2014 at Sotheby'sNew York, shows that Lennon's nonsense verse, puns, wicked humor and comic drawings continue to resonate 50 years after the publication of In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works," Gabriel Heaton, the deputy director of Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, said in a statement. A white glove sale is an auction in which every lot is sold.

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